fic: things we learned in girl guides
rpf. marion cotillard, marion/eva green, marion/melanie laurent, marion/diane kruger, marion/maria valverde, marion/guillaume canet. mentions of louis garrel/melanie laurent, eva green/maria valverde and guillaume canet/diane kruger. 2079 words. you always carry handcuffs in your purse? girl guides taught me to be prepared.
note: one small, very depressing piece of my marion canon. read at your risk. also, maria valverde is 23. this is not illegal. just in case anyone else was confused.
Marion doesn’t check any of her messages from the time in the Congo until she lands in Paris.
They’re painting the apartment and she asks for a hotel room, no, correct that, she asks for a hotel room alone and Guillaume seems a little hurt, he pulls his lip down a bit in a way that seems impossibly childish (didn’t you miss me?) and she says she just needs a night, just a night, you had a lot of nights, Marion, you had plenty of time and she doesn’t bother asking who he’s fucked while she’s been away. Christ, if he got bored enough it might even have been Diane. Now that would be pathetic and how very Guillaume too, how indecisive, cheating on your mistress with your wife, how like a Russian novel, an eventual punishment for adultery, the lovers will end up despising each other, always.
Guillaume left too many messages, Melanie a few, Eva none.
She supposes she shouldn’t expect anything different from her at this point.
-
“Cunt,” she says, “She’s a fucking cunt.”
She’s at the hotel bar. Melanie’s with her, she invited her on the spur of the moment and Melanie never seems to be be busy, unlike everyone else in this godforsaken industry. The bar’s one of those modern monstrosities and she’s needed a few extra just to distract herself from the chrome and Melanie just nods and pours herself another one, ever composed. She’s a different kind of cold, a gentler, more reserved kind, not like Eva the others and sometimes, Marion almost envies it.
“Yes. She is.”
“You don’t mind my talking about her, do you? Because, you know--”
Melanie laughs.
“You’re my best friend, cherie. Anything else is incidental.”
“But--”
“You know, Marion, everyone isn’t required to be in love with you.”
Marion thinks maybe the words don’t quite reach her face. But maybe that’s just more Cotillard-brand narcissism. God knows she knows enough about that.
-
Melanie goes down on her upstairs. She hasn’t been with a woman since Eva, hasn’t been with anyone but Guillaume for a while, for too long maybe, and it’s a relief. She knows that’s not a very sexy way to put it but that’s what it is, a relief, a release, and she guesses everything is clumsy most of the time. Not just sex, either, all of it.
She smokes a cigarette afterward on the balcony. Melanie follows her out. She has a vase in her hands.
“What have you got that for?”
“Throw it over. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Mel.”
Melanie raises an eyebrow.
She takes the vase out of her hands, throws it over the end of the balcony. She can’t even see it split.
“Happy?”
Melanie shrugs.
“I’ve always enjoyed breaking things.”
“Sure.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Are you in love with Louis?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I think I’d feel better about everything if you were in love with Louis.”
Melanie laughs.
“There’s no point in being in love with Louis. Charming as he is, that boy’s capable of the emotional development of a small rodent.”
“Never stopped anyone before.”
“Well, no. I’m not in love with Louis. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh.”
“Just oh?”
“Congratulations, I guess.”
They laugh.
-
Guillaume picks her up in the hotel lobby.
“You smell German,” she says.
His face makes her laugh.
-
Here’s a short story. You like those? Good.
The story starts with a woman and a man who isn’t her husband, who likes to say he is, with a penchant for infidelity and something of a hypocritical jealous streak. These two are at a party in Paris, mostly actors and directors, and they are looking for a woman for a threesome. This isn’t usual--it’s his birthday and generally, the tradition is that they get to invite another woman into their bed. It’s ostensibly for his benefit.
Melanie isn’t around (she was the girl last year) and Marion roundly rejected Diane and believe it or not, Guillaume had the gall to suggest that nice girl Eva who they’d seen around and she said Eva seemed like she had a stick up her ass and probably wouldn’t want to anyway.
(In case you are curious, Eva is still a cunt bitch. This has not changed since our last update.)
She sits down at the bar and it takes half a second to become obvious, the heavy lidded dark eyes, the calm smirk, the superiority--for a second it reminds her too much of her and they were in love once, in some movies, she heard about this, yes? She can’t remember her name, quite. She looks very young.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” the girl says.
“My boyfriend and I are looking for someone to fuck. Interested?”
The girl laughs.
“That is a joke, yes?”
“Not really. A little.”
“Well, you are very pretty. I can’t really say about your boyfriend.”
She laughs.
“I like your dress.”
The girl’s wearing red. Her lipstick is red too. She looks a bit like Merle Oberon.
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry--this is so embarrassing but I don’t really remember your name. You look familiar, I know you were in a film with Ev--”
“Maria. I’m Maria.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Perhaps you and your boyfriend can watch the film I made with your friend Eva. And then he can unzip his pants, rub one out and you can call it a threesome.”
Marion draws her head back a bit.
“You’re--”
“Honest?”
“My friend Eva?”
Maria laughs.
“She mentioned you. Once or twice. Don’t get into a knot, straight girl.”
“I--”
Maria leans forward. She smells spicy and her breath is hot and smoky and in Marion’s face. Her lips turn up a bit.
“I’m happy to fuck you. Just don’t bring the boy along.”
They end up in Marion’s hotel room, she is pressed back up against the bed, her hands chained to the top of the bed (you always carry handcuffs in your purse? girl guides taught me to be prepared), Maria crawling over her, kissing her lips, her neck, her breasts, not touching her why the hell isn’t she touching her and Maria lets out a low soft laugh, running a hand up Marion’s hip and then her head is between her legs and fuck, she is tracing circles into her clit with her tongue and she gasps and fuck fuck, she doesn’t know, it is fast, faster than she expects and then Maria raises her head.
She finds herself out on the balcony again. She’s brought out a vase with her.
“You want to do something really sick with a vase?”
Maria raises an eyebrow.
“No.”
She pushes it off the edge. The vase smashes somewhere down below.
“What is that for, straight girl?”
“It’s a bit of a tradition now.”
“Inside joke?”
“Not exactly.”
“I’m not leaving until you return the favor, you know, Cotillard.”
“I’d never assume.”
“I think I like you, you know. And I hate actors.”
There is a pause. There are searchlights going out somewhere else in town. Two men across the street in a window are fucking--they haven’t closed their blinds. She hates Paris.
“Did you sleep with Eva on that film?”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“Fuck you.”
“She was always somewhere else, you know. It hardly mattered. I came so close to falling in love with her but I realized how pointless it would be. How silly.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Eva’s not like other film stars, is she? She’s so fragile, so delicate. She doesn’t even seem to like herself. Any moment you think she’s going to fly off a ledge, yes?”
“Yes.”
“She uses that fragility, that self hatred, that insecurity--whether she intends to or not, she can point at and absolve herself for all the damage that’s around her. Eva’s a ten car pile up.’
“Yes. Yes, she is.”
“She said you were a narcissistic whore.”
“Yes,” Marion says, taking a drag, “and that’s worse, isn’t it? At least Eva doesn’t mean it.”
Marion means it. She’s come to realize that’s her essential problem.
So she fucked Diane once. It was more a test than anything else, that moment when Therese Raquin or Anna Karenina or any one of these fucking women realize they’ve been tricked, that the affair’s just a smokescreen for nothing being there with their precious lover and now they’re up to their neck in something they don’t want (this doesn’t apply to Eva, by the way. Even if she is a cunt bitch. It just doesn’t).
Diane’s very straight indeed and it happened at some party where Guillaume was so pleased that his wife and his mistress were getting along so well and the smug look on his face was enough to set her off. She suspects, attractive as she knows she is (and frankly, she’s all-too-aware of it, as everyone seems to like to remind her) that for Diane, it’s almost all about Guillaume, all about vengeance. She’s a dull blonde, a dull girl, all poses and her noises are oddly stifled, as though she’s ashamed of actually having a good time for once and she comes easily, no fuss Diane Guillaume used to call her. Well, there you go. No fuss Diane.
“That was better than it ever was with him,” Diane says.
“You want me to pass it on?”
So Guillaume starts sleeping with his ex wife six months later. So she was kind of expecting it, even.
“You want me to break his legs?”
Eva had been lying back, with that slight touch of a smirk she had, her eyes-half closed, something so clever, so arch, my lady when she walks walks on the ground. She could look at her for hours, she could look at her for days, she could--
“I think that’d be a little hypocritical.”
(so her face is taller than Paris, so she is superimposed over everyone else and everything else so she is every dark haired woman on the street so every unnamed dead film star on the television is eva eva eva so she is burned into her face her eyes her lips so she sees her when she shuts her eyes so it's much too much and she wants to cut it out of herself--she’s killed her, that’s it, she’s killed her.)
The next time she sees Eva isn’t at a premiere or a party--it’s at the grocery in Paris picking up a steak and it seems so funny, so ironic and Eva freezes when she sees her.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
There is a pause.
“How have you been?” Marion asks.
“All right,” Eva says.
“Ah.”
“And you?”
“I’ve been well--better than usual.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t think anyone recognizes you. You look so different without your eyes.”
She laughs a bit, drawing fake eyeliner under her eyes with her finger.
“Ah.”
“I hear you’re going out to Cornwall.”
“Yes.”
“Must be pretty bleak up there.”
“I expect I’ll find some way to keep occupied.” Eva lets out a short laugh.
“I’m sure you will.”
“You’re going to have to tell some ways. I hear you’re very good at finding ways to keep occupied.”
She steps back.
“Yes. Last time I checked, I am.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s nice for you.”
Eva is beginning to walk.
“You’re right. I am a narcissist and a whore and I do step on everyone’s feet.”
Eva turns. It’s a funny thing to say in public, especially for her, especially when people might be listening. She feels hot and it comes out quickly and she’s glad she said it, somehow.
“I never said that.”
“You might as well have.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
Guillaume’s home waiting.
She tosses his favorite lamp out the window.
note: one small, very depressing piece of my marion canon. read at your risk. also, maria valverde is 23. this is not illegal. just in case anyone else was confused.
Marion doesn’t check any of her messages from the time in the Congo until she lands in Paris.
They’re painting the apartment and she asks for a hotel room, no, correct that, she asks for a hotel room alone and Guillaume seems a little hurt, he pulls his lip down a bit in a way that seems impossibly childish (didn’t you miss me?) and she says she just needs a night, just a night, you had a lot of nights, Marion, you had plenty of time and she doesn’t bother asking who he’s fucked while she’s been away. Christ, if he got bored enough it might even have been Diane. Now that would be pathetic and how very Guillaume too, how indecisive, cheating on your mistress with your wife, how like a Russian novel, an eventual punishment for adultery, the lovers will end up despising each other, always.
Guillaume left too many messages, Melanie a few, Eva none.
She supposes she shouldn’t expect anything different from her at this point.
-
“Cunt,” she says, “She’s a fucking cunt.”
She’s at the hotel bar. Melanie’s with her, she invited her on the spur of the moment and Melanie never seems to be be busy, unlike everyone else in this godforsaken industry. The bar’s one of those modern monstrosities and she’s needed a few extra just to distract herself from the chrome and Melanie just nods and pours herself another one, ever composed. She’s a different kind of cold, a gentler, more reserved kind, not like Eva the others and sometimes, Marion almost envies it.
“Yes. She is.”
“You don’t mind my talking about her, do you? Because, you know--”
Melanie laughs.
“You’re my best friend, cherie. Anything else is incidental.”
“But--”
“You know, Marion, everyone isn’t required to be in love with you.”
Marion thinks maybe the words don’t quite reach her face. But maybe that’s just more Cotillard-brand narcissism. God knows she knows enough about that.
-
Melanie goes down on her upstairs. She hasn’t been with a woman since Eva, hasn’t been with anyone but Guillaume for a while, for too long maybe, and it’s a relief. She knows that’s not a very sexy way to put it but that’s what it is, a relief, a release, and she guesses everything is clumsy most of the time. Not just sex, either, all of it.
She smokes a cigarette afterward on the balcony. Melanie follows her out. She has a vase in her hands.
“What have you got that for?”
“Throw it over. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Mel.”
Melanie raises an eyebrow.
She takes the vase out of her hands, throws it over the end of the balcony. She can’t even see it split.
“Happy?”
Melanie shrugs.
“I’ve always enjoyed breaking things.”
“Sure.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Are you in love with Louis?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I think I’d feel better about everything if you were in love with Louis.”
Melanie laughs.
“There’s no point in being in love with Louis. Charming as he is, that boy’s capable of the emotional development of a small rodent.”
“Never stopped anyone before.”
“Well, no. I’m not in love with Louis. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh.”
“Just oh?”
“Congratulations, I guess.”
They laugh.
-
Guillaume picks her up in the hotel lobby.
“You smell German,” she says.
His face makes her laugh.
-
Here’s a short story. You like those? Good.
The story starts with a woman and a man who isn’t her husband, who likes to say he is, with a penchant for infidelity and something of a hypocritical jealous streak. These two are at a party in Paris, mostly actors and directors, and they are looking for a woman for a threesome. This isn’t usual--it’s his birthday and generally, the tradition is that they get to invite another woman into their bed. It’s ostensibly for his benefit.
Melanie isn’t around (she was the girl last year) and Marion roundly rejected Diane and believe it or not, Guillaume had the gall to suggest that nice girl Eva who they’d seen around and she said Eva seemed like she had a stick up her ass and probably wouldn’t want to anyway.
(In case you are curious, Eva is still a cunt bitch. This has not changed since our last update.)
She sits down at the bar and it takes half a second to become obvious, the heavy lidded dark eyes, the calm smirk, the superiority--for a second it reminds her too much of her and they were in love once, in some movies, she heard about this, yes? She can’t remember her name, quite. She looks very young.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” the girl says.
“My boyfriend and I are looking for someone to fuck. Interested?”
The girl laughs.
“That is a joke, yes?”
“Not really. A little.”
“Well, you are very pretty. I can’t really say about your boyfriend.”
She laughs.
“I like your dress.”
The girl’s wearing red. Her lipstick is red too. She looks a bit like Merle Oberon.
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry--this is so embarrassing but I don’t really remember your name. You look familiar, I know you were in a film with Ev--”
“Maria. I’m Maria.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Perhaps you and your boyfriend can watch the film I made with your friend Eva. And then he can unzip his pants, rub one out and you can call it a threesome.”
Marion draws her head back a bit.
“You’re--”
“Honest?”
“My friend Eva?”
Maria laughs.
“She mentioned you. Once or twice. Don’t get into a knot, straight girl.”
“I--”
Maria leans forward. She smells spicy and her breath is hot and smoky and in Marion’s face. Her lips turn up a bit.
“I’m happy to fuck you. Just don’t bring the boy along.”
They end up in Marion’s hotel room, she is pressed back up against the bed, her hands chained to the top of the bed (you always carry handcuffs in your purse? girl guides taught me to be prepared), Maria crawling over her, kissing her lips, her neck, her breasts, not touching her why the hell isn’t she touching her and Maria lets out a low soft laugh, running a hand up Marion’s hip and then her head is between her legs and fuck, she is tracing circles into her clit with her tongue and she gasps and fuck fuck, she doesn’t know, it is fast, faster than she expects and then Maria raises her head.
She finds herself out on the balcony again. She’s brought out a vase with her.
“You want to do something really sick with a vase?”
Maria raises an eyebrow.
“No.”
She pushes it off the edge. The vase smashes somewhere down below.
“What is that for, straight girl?”
“It’s a bit of a tradition now.”
“Inside joke?”
“Not exactly.”
“I’m not leaving until you return the favor, you know, Cotillard.”
“I’d never assume.”
“I think I like you, you know. And I hate actors.”
There is a pause. There are searchlights going out somewhere else in town. Two men across the street in a window are fucking--they haven’t closed their blinds. She hates Paris.
“Did you sleep with Eva on that film?”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“Fuck you.”
“She was always somewhere else, you know. It hardly mattered. I came so close to falling in love with her but I realized how pointless it would be. How silly.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Eva’s not like other film stars, is she? She’s so fragile, so delicate. She doesn’t even seem to like herself. Any moment you think she’s going to fly off a ledge, yes?”
“Yes.”
“She uses that fragility, that self hatred, that insecurity--whether she intends to or not, she can point at and absolve herself for all the damage that’s around her. Eva’s a ten car pile up.’
“Yes. Yes, she is.”
“She said you were a narcissistic whore.”
“Yes,” Marion says, taking a drag, “and that’s worse, isn’t it? At least Eva doesn’t mean it.”
Marion means it. She’s come to realize that’s her essential problem.
So she fucked Diane once. It was more a test than anything else, that moment when Therese Raquin or Anna Karenina or any one of these fucking women realize they’ve been tricked, that the affair’s just a smokescreen for nothing being there with their precious lover and now they’re up to their neck in something they don’t want (this doesn’t apply to Eva, by the way. Even if she is a cunt bitch. It just doesn’t).
Diane’s very straight indeed and it happened at some party where Guillaume was so pleased that his wife and his mistress were getting along so well and the smug look on his face was enough to set her off. She suspects, attractive as she knows she is (and frankly, she’s all-too-aware of it, as everyone seems to like to remind her) that for Diane, it’s almost all about Guillaume, all about vengeance. She’s a dull blonde, a dull girl, all poses and her noises are oddly stifled, as though she’s ashamed of actually having a good time for once and she comes easily, no fuss Diane Guillaume used to call her. Well, there you go. No fuss Diane.
“That was better than it ever was with him,” Diane says.
“You want me to pass it on?”
So Guillaume starts sleeping with his ex wife six months later. So she was kind of expecting it, even.
“You want me to break his legs?”
Eva had been lying back, with that slight touch of a smirk she had, her eyes-half closed, something so clever, so arch, my lady when she walks walks on the ground. She could look at her for hours, she could look at her for days, she could--
“I think that’d be a little hypocritical.”
(so her face is taller than Paris, so she is superimposed over everyone else and everything else so she is every dark haired woman on the street so every unnamed dead film star on the television is eva eva eva so she is burned into her face her eyes her lips so she sees her when she shuts her eyes so it's much too much and she wants to cut it out of herself--she’s killed her, that’s it, she’s killed her.)
The next time she sees Eva isn’t at a premiere or a party--it’s at the grocery in Paris picking up a steak and it seems so funny, so ironic and Eva freezes when she sees her.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
There is a pause.
“How have you been?” Marion asks.
“All right,” Eva says.
“Ah.”
“And you?”
“I’ve been well--better than usual.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t think anyone recognizes you. You look so different without your eyes.”
She laughs a bit, drawing fake eyeliner under her eyes with her finger.
“Ah.”
“I hear you’re going out to Cornwall.”
“Yes.”
“Must be pretty bleak up there.”
“I expect I’ll find some way to keep occupied.” Eva lets out a short laugh.
“I’m sure you will.”
“You’re going to have to tell some ways. I hear you’re very good at finding ways to keep occupied.”
She steps back.
“Yes. Last time I checked, I am.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s nice for you.”
Eva is beginning to walk.
“You’re right. I am a narcissist and a whore and I do step on everyone’s feet.”
Eva turns. It’s a funny thing to say in public, especially for her, especially when people might be listening. She feels hot and it comes out quickly and she’s glad she said it, somehow.
“I never said that.”
“You might as well have.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
Guillaume’s home waiting.
She tosses his favorite lamp out the window.